The people at Chptr are not standing still.  In the last couple of weeks they have added Death Care industry veteran Glenn Gould to their team in a position that they term President of Funeral Home Services.  You can see a Chaptr release on that move here.

 

The company also announced on March 2 that Anthem Partners would be “expand(ing) its partnership with Chptr across all Anthem locations in the US after completing a series of successful pilot programs and an extensive diligence process.”  You can read a press release on that here.

 

Looking to Broadcast Death Notices —  If you look at the Chpter website, that you can acccess here, you will notice an initiative to move death notices back to broadcast. . . .and not broadcast radio, but broadcast television.  The following is a “Demo” on the Chptr broadcast television notices that was posted on Vimeo:

 

 

 

In the press release announcing the hiring of Glenn Gould as President of Funeral Home Services you can see that part of his instructions at Chptr will be to move this initiative forward as the following statement is in the press release:

 

“At Chptr, Gould will lead funeral home strategy, professional engagement, and alignment, ensuring the company’s Broadcast, Social, and Video offerings reflect the operational realities of funeral homes and the expectations of the families they serve. His appointment anchors Chptr’s national broadcast platform in deep, lived experience inside the profession. . . . . .Beyond visibility, Gould notes that these partnerships foster valuable relationships between funeral homes and their local broadcasters, driving more traffic to both the station’s and the funeral home’s websites.”

 

Funeral Director Daily take:  The television death notices are interesting to me.  The community that I served in has now grown to about 40,000 people in the county who use one of three funeral homes.  The local newspaper comes out only twice a week although the online version is updated several times per day with current news including death notices and obituaries.

 

In addition, one local AM radio station also announces all death notices and funeral services three times per day.  During my complete career and even today it is my opinion that the 55+ age cohort gets most of its information on community deaths via that media channel.

 

However, television advertising was very good to our funeral home.  Starting in the 1990’s when our funeral home was a member of the Trust 100 marketing group and used their mailers and television ad spots to pull in pre-arrangment clientele.  We did not advertise with stations directly but worked with the cable television company in our ZIP code (in TV terms – Area of Dominant Influence or ADI) to target the channels we wanted to be on that were seen on our ZIP code local cable channels only.

 

If I remember corectly, we targeted ESPN, CNN, Fox News, and the HGTV network for our advertising spots and they worked very well in relation to the resources that we put into the process.  I always looked at television advertising in two ways.  First of all, even if people did not contact us for pre-arrangements, the subjective part was that every time local potential clients saw the ad on television it provided “Top of Mind Awareness” about our funeral home  —  which I believe helped with increasing at-need death calls.  Secondly, I had to look at what I call the “Pull vs. Relative Cost”.  That would be the objective analysis on the cost of the advertising budget vs. how many pre-needs we wrote.

 

Television has changed a lot since that time.  Using streaming channels one still has the ability to advertise locally and even be interactive with viewers via Smart TV’s.  So, I cannot pretend to know the markets for that advertising today like I knew it for local cable back in the 1990’s.  However, I did go to Gemini Artificial Intelligence for some answers and here is what I found about the ability to “locally target” audiences of streaming channels:

 

Yes, companies can advertise on streaming platforms by ZIP codes allowing for highly localized targeting that reaches specific neighborhoods, with some services offering it for local business needs. This capability allows advertisers to avoid paying for irrelevant views outside their service area.

Key Details on ZIP Code Streaming Advertising:

• Precision Targeting: Advertisers can select specific ZIP codes or use radius targeting around a specific address. 
• Platform Capabilities: Many platforms, including Amazon DSP, enable zip-code level, location-based, and interactive ads. 
• Benefits: It helps local businesses with limited budgets run efficient campaigns and enables the use of specific, relevant, local, messaging. 
• How it Works: It often uses IP address matching to ensure the ad reaches the desired geographic area. 

 

And, here’s a couple of companies that apparently do that type of “localized” marketing:

1. tvScientific
2. Mountain
3. Roku Ads Manager

 

So, I can see a potential for television death notices.  From my point of view, success would be measured by a subjective value determination by the funeral home on if the “Top of Mind Awareness”, coupled with the anticipated increased family satisfaction of client families in seeing their death notices on broadcast television was positive in relation to the cost of the television time paid for by the funeral home.

 

Most everybody will have a different definition of “success”  using that financial relativity concept.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Trailblazing embalmer steps back from family-run funeral business.  The Business Desk (Great Britain)
• Cisco earns funeral director and embalmer licenses.  Mercer County Outlook (OH)
• “We’re going to make sure no one is forgotten”.  VFW Media and Events
• Matthews International announces board changes at annual meeting.  Investing.com

 

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